The instant invention is a comprehensive software driven solution which provides business enterprises with a quantum leap forward when integrating their existing CICS transactions into scalable e-Business applications. As such the instant invention is believed to be the first solution for invoking existing CICS BMS transactions and delivering their output as an XML document—not a highly restrictive 3270 screen as provided for in today's prior art systems. “XML” refers to Extensible Markup Language and allows designers to create their own customized tags, enabling the definition, transmission, validation, and interpretation of data between applications and between organizations.
The term “tag” refers to a command inserted in a document that specifies how the document, or a portion of the document, should be formatted. Tags are used by all format specifications that store documents as text files. This includes SGML and HTML.
CICS transactions, running on IBM enterprise servers, are the most common category of host-based e-Business transactions. Enterprises have typically extended these transactions to the web using “web-to-host” products that rely on terminal emulation, screen scraping, proprietary development tools and scripting languages. As corporations continue making the transition from ‘bricks-and-mortar’ enterprises to ‘clicks-and-mortar’, they must provide employees, partners, and customers with better access to enterprise data via intranets, extranets and the Internet. This requires a more robust, scalable and cost-effective approach to legacy application and data integration than is afforded by existing art systems. Succinctly stated, industry standards like XML are key to e-Business enablement, but are of no benefit to industry if one of the most common categories of e-Business transactions can not take advantage of its benefit. By replacing terminal-oriented data streams with an XML document containing simple name/value pairs, the instant invention advances the art and drastically reduces the complexity of integrating CICS data with e-Business applications.
“Today, IBM customers use CICS to process over 30 billion transactions per day with a commercial value of several trillion dollars per week,” says Dr. Geoff Sharman, senior consultant with IBM Transaction Systems. “By allowing these customers to XML-enable existing transactions without code changes, the instant invention demonstrates how easily CICS transactions can be integrated into rapidly deployed and highly scalable e-business applications.” The instant invention facilitates this integration by providing a platform-neutral, XML pathway from CICS transactions to client application irrespective of the computing platform on which they execute. In doing so, the instant invention completely circumvents the use of 3270 data streams and the many, layered components associated with the screen scraping-based solutions of the present art.
“Many enterprises that are using web-to-host solutions which rely on screen scraping techniques are finding they have difficulty scaling,” says Darcy Fowkes, research director of Internet services for the Aberdeen Group. “This is unacceptable to organizations that have a large investment in CICS/BMS applications that are running in high volume, production environments.” These organizations need an alternative to terminal emulation and screen scraping-based technologies to “e-enable” these production environments. The instant invention provides a more direct, XML pathway to middle-tier application servers and the present invention allows the web-enabling of legacy CICS transactions, replacing web-to-host solutions that rely on screen scraping.
The instant invention expresses output from an existing CICS/BMS transaction as an XML document containing order independent, name-value pairs rather than a fixed format, 3270 screen buffer. This eliminates the client application's dependence on screen formats as well as the need to synchronize changes to the host and client applications. The instant invention is insensitive to changes in the location of fields on a 3270 screen that would cause screen scraping solutions to fail because it intercepts data into, and out of, a CICS transaction before a 3270 data stream is generated as output or expected as input. In fact, using the instant invention, a 3270 data stream is never created. This is possible because the instant invention interacts with CICS applications through the 3270 Bridge interface, a standard feature of CICS Transaction Server version 1.3 (or later). Consequently, no modifications to CICS applications are required; no per-transaction setup is required either.
The instant invention is compatible with any client application or middle-tier application server that can send a request to an IBM mainframe and receive an XML document. This includes, without limitations, IBM WebSphere™, BEA WebLogic® and SilverStream Application Server. The instant invention also compliments, without limitation, the broad range of evolving middleware technologies based upon XML, including Microsoft BizTalk and SilverStream eXtend™. To paraphrase Fred Holahan, VP & General Manager “Although major application software vendors are embracing XML as their eBusiness interoperability standard, the application portfolios of many enterprises include host-based legacy systems. To succeed in eBusiness integration, enterprises need a range of choices for XML-enabling their host-based applications. The instant invention's technology provides a unique approach for XML-enabling CICS terminal-oriented applications, one that complements SilverStream's legacy integration strategy. Once CICS transactions have been XML-enabled using the instant invention, they can be accessed by eXtend to support real-time integrations with Web portals, trading exchanges, vendor packages and non-CICS legacy applications.”